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Tuesday, March 26, 2019

Why there won't be another Chapo--The end of the big cartels

Earlier this month, a
federal jury in New York convicted Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera, the former
kingpin of Mexico’s powerful Sinaloa Cartel, on ten charges related to drug
trafficking. El Chapo was stunned, his wife cried, and U.S. authorities crowed.

For some, the verdict
offered finality: “The reign of Joaquín Guzmán Loera’s crime and violence has
come to an end,” said FBI Director Christopher Wray.

For others,
vindication: “There are those who say the war on drugs is not worth fighting,”
said Richard P. Donoghue, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New
York. “Those people are wrong.”

Some spoke of heroism:
“Today’s verdict,” said U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen,
“sends an unmistakable message to transnational criminals: You cannot hide, you
are not beyond our reach, and we will find you and bring you to face justice.”

Others expressed a
sense of relief: “As was clear to the jury, Guzmán Loera’s massive,
multibillion-dollar criminal enterprise was responsible for flooding the
streets of the United States with hundreds of tons of cocaine as well as
enormous quantities of other dangerous drugs such as heroin and
methamphetamine,” according to acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker.

These officials all
offered variations on a popular drug war narrative: an all-controlling kingpin
builds a criminal empire, leaving death and destruction in his wake. Law
enforcement tracks, arrests, and incarcerates him—and, in the case of El Chapo,
rearrests and reincarcerates him after he escapes—and then convicts him. The
public embraces this story, watching it over and over, first as news on CNN and
then as fiction on Netflix. It is simple and understandable, and it helps us
sleep at night. It is also false.

The obsession with El
Chapo and his exploits, as well as those of his associates and his cartel,
reflects an outdated view of the drug trade. The idea that this trade is
dominated by vertically integrated organizations, each run by a single
mastermind such as El Chapo, is a myth—and a dangerous one, in that it may
undermine international efforts to slow drug trafficking and combat the
violence of criminal groups such as the Sinaloa Cartel.

THE NEW DRUG TRADE

Take the case of
fentanyl. The same day that El Chapo was sentenced, anywhere between 60 and 100
people in the United States likely died from overdosing on fentanyl, a powerful
synthetic opioid made in China and often trafficked through Mexico by the
country’s myriad criminal organizations. In 2018, fentanyl accounted for
roughly 30,000 overdoses in the United States, according to the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention.

Fentanyl was barely a
blip in the U.S. drug market in 2013. Today, it is replacing heroin. Officials
from the U.S. Department of Justice told me recently that there are two major
criminal groups—El Chapo’s Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel
(CJNG)—behind the surge in fentanyl. But a deeper look reveals a wide variety
of American, Chinese, Dominican, Indian, and Mexican groups supplying the U.S.
market, some that conduct almost all of their business online from within the
United States. El Chapo and his vaunted Sinaloa Cartel are not responsible for
this transformation. And as my organization, InSight Crime, showed in a recent
report on Mexico’s role in the fentanyl trade, published with support from the
Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute, removing cartels and their kingpins will do
little to slow this transformation.

The reason is that the
rise of synthetic drugs is changing the structure of the illegal drug market.
Mexican cartels were built for trafficking drugs such as cocaine and heroin.
These drugs, which are labor-intensive to produce and most profitable when
trafficked at scale, tend to favor the emergence of large, centralized criminal
syndicates that can coordinate vast transnational networks of production and
distribution.

Synthetics, by
contrast, can be cheaply produced from precursor chemicals and are potent
enough to be profitable even when produced on a small scale: one fentanyl
analogue, carfentanil, is roughly 100 times stronger than fentanyl, which is
itself some 80 to 100 times stronger than morphine. In our report, we liken the
synthetic drug trade to the microchip industry, in which continued innovation
allows for ever greater potency to be fit in ever smaller packages.

Because fentanyl is so
potent, it can move in small consignments. A large part of the fentanyl
produced in China is sent directly to the United States through the mail. Even
many precursor chemicals, also produced in China, go directly to the United
States. According to numerous U.S. officials and health experts we consulted,
this direct-from-China trade may account for the bulk of the fentanyl in the
U.S. market. Once the drugs reach the United States, small traders peddle the
drugs over the dark web, encrypted messaging services, or social media, cutting
out the cartels entirely.

Some fentanyl and
fentanyl precursors do move through Mexico. But they go through many hands on
their way to market. Mexico’s two main Pacific ports, Lázaro Cárdenas and
Manzanillo, service several masters, including various criminal groups that
have deep contacts in Asia from their time producing other synthetic drugs,
particularly methamphetamine. The precursors make their way to laboratories in
Sinaloa but also Mexico City and points north, such as Baja California, where
they are used to make fentanyl that is then trafficked in bulk across the U.S.
border. There is also a possibility that some of the precursors may enter the
United States, then cross to Mexico for production on the Mexican side of the
border, as one recent case illustrated.

There are, quite
simply, a variety of organizations at work. An increasing amount of the
fentanyl coming via Mexico, for example, is camouflaged as oxycodone and other
prescription pills, since the sellers do not want the users to know they are
taking the deadliest drug on the market. And although the global market for
counterfeit pharmaceuticals is huge, it has never been the purview of groups
such as the Sinaloa Cartel—it is more likely the domain of smaller
organizations in border areas such as Tijuana, which service the wildly
overpriced U.S. market.

Fentanyl, with its
potency and its relative ease of manufacture and transport, offers an extreme
example of the forces atomizing the drug trade, but markets for legacy drugs
such as cocaine, heroin, marijuana, and methamphetamine have also fragmented,
in part because of the capture and prosecution of people such as El Chapo. But
although security forces in the United States, Mexico, and elsewhere have
played a role in this atomization of the drug trade, arresting capos is
different from dismantling criminal organizations.

KINGPIN WITHOUT A CROWN

Large criminal groups
such as the Sinaloa Cartel and the CJNG are still powerful, and they still
serve an important purpose in the drug trade. They assume a good portion of the
risk of transporting drugs in bulk and selling them wholesale to smaller
networks engaged in street-level distribution. In the case of fentanyl, for
instance, Mexican cartels sell to Dominican groups that control much of the
fentanyl and heroin market in the United States. Taking them down should be
part of any counternarcotics strategy.

But the days of the
monolithic, hegemonic criminal groups with all-powerful leaders are over. For
U.S. policymakers, it may be overkill to direct the resources of six federal
law enforcement agencies toward dismantling these groups, especially in the era
of synthetic drugs.

Dealing with illicit
drugs requires a holistic approach dedicated to understanding the complexity of
drug use and its ripple effects on everything from the rule of law to democracy.
During the El Chapo trial, for instance, prosecutors and the judge spent
significant energy suppressing testimony about the systemic failures of Mexican
society—grinding poverty, endemic corruption, a fraudulent democracy—that
enable large criminal groups to flourish and even penetrate the government
institutions set up to combat them. Although some allegations, such as the
claim that former Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto took a $100 million
bribe from El Chapo, bordered on the absurd, the excluded testimony highlighted
problems in Mexican society that stretch far beyond the cartels and will
certainly outlive them.

El Chapo was a powerful
and wealthy drug lord, and bringing him down was an undeniably important step
in curtailing the reach of Mexico’s cartels. But burnishing his status as a
kingpin perpetuates a false narrative that destroying him—and those like
him—will solve the problems posed by the drug trade. In fact, convicting one
drug lord is more akin to plucking a single bee from the hive.

50 comments:

Such BS article. Mencho is already bigger than chapo. Chapo could never take a damn plaza.. mencho is in onother level, gevwill get caught like most because like chapo Ave Escobar he wants to control. But nevertheless, hes a bigger capo than chapo.

@ 9:39 Other than Tijuana, which was 'orphaned' due to AFO imploding after the arrest of Benjamin, Chapo never managed to take plaza in his life. Every time the CDS tried to infiltrate foreign cartel territory they got smacked down.

Facts:Chapo became the co-head of the sinaloa cartel in the late 80s when miguel felix divided up the cartels, he was in power for almost 30 years. Mencho was chichincle to nacho coronel, 10 years, simple math, someone is smoking if they think mencho is bigger

There are still big living legends active in sinaloa maybe not as famous as chapo but they have the same money and power also a lot of people working for them from Europe to sinaloa u people have never heard of "pedro loaiza" "panio beltran" "hector roman" there are many more big dogs out there that have been in the game longer than chapo and still keep moving tons evry month CRA Will keep making money for many more decades it's a legacy of generations from many family's this sounds like bullshit but its true like it or not the dea puts list out there hunting down anvendaños and the cazares family together with chapos but they are just at the tip of the iceberg and will never finish

Sinaloa is another level . There are so many people on next level . Don Lupe Tapia is a bigger boss than what people think he controls it all Mayo left him the keys to the lambo. Saludos pa taquichamona !

I agree and disagree: sure Chapo was an image made up by big brother in order to put a face on OUR enemy.

Chapo himself is a campesino who cant read and write and had just a nominal role in a big machine which is fueled by corruption and poverty.

BUT just as Chapo (and e.g. Osama bin Laden) where enemy images created by big brother to allow our elite to execute policies of social control based on lies, they will create many many more of these fake 'bad hombres' to fool us into believing that they are fighting for us whilst fucking us from behind!

Purdue Pharma paying 270 million dollars to start settling claims and lawsuits for their part in opioid crisis.-270 billion dollars in profits will not be affected.--Opioid business and precursors have been shafted to the street gangs and imported from China and Mexico, for a while now...Don't worry.

The war on drugs is and will never be winnable. As for the end of kingpins there are still many (Government condoned and assisted).Fentanyl,cocaine,heroin ect will always have a presence in our daily lives. It's up to those to educate oneself not to consume.

As for fentanyl, China has yet to ban the drug in their country. What better way than to flood a poison to another country where divisions are being displayed. Moreover, when Americans are killing themselves in many aspects (mentality, physically, educationally,economically and spiritually). What better way to harm one's global competitors than from within. Realistic; employers are having a difficult time hiring new employees due to drug usage in America. Its epidemic proportions out here.

Remember China doesn't have a problem; Americans do.China's president clearly stated this fact.

6:21 the sackler family and their favorite pill maker advertised the good news, foreign consumption of Oxy and other opiates they manufacture is more than making up for the loss of the US market, that means China is getting worked on too, and La Mencha and Co. will never be out of business.No word if the Russians are helping, but speed has been widely used by the melitary, even Hitler and the Nazis helped themselves some for the Kraut Army of Nazis, come think of it they invented speed, and aspirin to smoke, while in Bolivia Klaus Barbie was their employee promoting cocaine to replace the loss of Vietnamese Heroin after uncle Ho kicked the US on the nuts.

@6:21: Good post... I agree with your points. About employers having problems finding good employees. Years ago, I knew a sharp Columbiano who knew much about drugs and addictions to them. He got a job in the Phoenix area as a consultant to big corporations wanting to keep their operations free of drug addicts. He lectured and offered methods for spotting problem people and for not hiring them. He was very happy to have found an occupation that used his knowledge for good.Mexico-Watcher

if there is not to be another chapo or the cartel era its over, well they are living on another planet, dimension or world because el mayo its been ruling for more than 30 years and the cds still controls the trafficking and selling of drugs on the whole world..I'M NOT A CDS NUTHUGGER just a guy looking at the world.

7:26 first time I see el Azul involved in Kiki Camarena's abduction, torture and murder, absolutely not like the guy, he was always a man of peace...On the other hand, the CIA "rogue agent impersonators" like Cuban refugee Felix Ismael Rodriguez Mendigutia, Oliver North, John Poindexter, and their employers, who have been denounced even on Fox News, have not been bothered since they got president pardoned to obstruct the Iran/Contra investigations...--Mexicans like DFS Manuel Bartlett, Javier Garcia Paniagua, fernando Gutierrez Barrios or Manlio Fabio Beltrones (Barrios secretaria) habe been pretty much been left alone too, (all DFS GANGSTERS PUPPETS OF THE REAL CIA)

"Its the users, stupid." The drug use is just a symptom of the gross social and moral decay of western society. When you get to the point where half the population admits to at least some usage, you are screwed. No amount of trying to eliminate the suppliers is going to stop the flow of drugs as the pool of suppliers is endless when the money is so big. Frankly I am beginning to think the societies which just execute the users really have the only answer here.

its the stupid....as in those who are not to bright who just so happen to also use drugs. yal make it sound like most of these folks were on there way to becoming the next nobel prize ground breaking thinkers until big berrddd drugs came a callin and all the problems began. You know what that is? a cop out, stupid people do stupid things, one of their favorite things to do is to act a certain way and blame other people or even better, personify a material object to take the blame for their lack of responsibility and poor choices/character ((ie GUNS are EVIL, so evil in fact that its almost as if the man with arse for brain didn't kill all those innocent people by choice of his own will to action. That SELFISH METH made that popular girl steal from her friends and family, shes not a shart of a human being lacking in care for anyone but herself no no no, the METH is SELFISH, see what it made her do?.... see when you get to the point where half the population admits not out loud of course but via their actions that they too don't like responsbility and rather blame material objects for their flawed rational, when one argues the merits and superior sense of having public policy created in response to the actions and synapses of the least among us, thats how you'll know the blind man imploring the virtues clothing outdoors while socrateasing a freestyle on top a soap box while unknowingly in the nude. . No amount of trying to eliminate one social ill via a short sight, a torque wrench and a scapegoat ... is going to produce a crop we want to harvest, these choices we make have impacts on real peoples lives, so before proclaiming with certainty aloud that where this reality of show next need go a fait acompli to climax solutione finale once and for all ey? is by execution en mass of a hefty % of the adult population. Join us or die, think like me or else is what spawns this type of mess. I dont condone drug use, nor do I like it, I dont do it, but ah be damned to take away your choice to do so either by threat of punishment or worse. See Nancy Regan was correct she just got the spelling wrong...probably went to public school huh? wink wink...not "just say no" but.."just learn & know".....heck even "just listen(shush up) and yes" may be whats needed. Whats worse than a dangerous knee jerk idea such as promoting violence as solution.that affects everyone, including you and i, our fellow sisters and brothers so profoundly? frankly im begiinning to think and so should you. please plant seeds you wish you harvest